


My safe haven is you

by hala_macaron



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Anyways, Even Prime, F/M, Modern AU, basically just everyone - Freeform, but I only want the best for my secret santa, god i hate him so much, it’s sweet and happy and we’re probably gonna be sick afterwards, so here you go, this is fluff people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21920809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hala_macaron/pseuds/hala_macaron
Summary: This was terrible. This was worse than the time he’d had to testify in front of court to get away from Prime with his little brother. This was so, so much worse because he had no bloody clue what to do.Imp wanted to do something very special for his school assignment in science and would not do anything else but what he  wanted. So now Hordak had to find a way to help him. Great.
Relationships: Entrapta & Imp (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), Hordak & Imp (She-Ra)
Kudos: 103





	My safe haven is you

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I hope my secret santa likes it. I took your wish and turned it into some sweet fluffy story, so I hope you have a great day and that your present is to your liking. Blessed holidays to you, and to everyone reading.

Considering everything that was going on, Hordak thought he was keeping it together pretty well. He didn’t slam his bag onto his table when he arrived at university, because slamming would have meant admitting defeat, weakness, that something was bothering him. That was bullshit, everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about. Except for that being a bold faced lie, because this was bad.This was terrible. This was worse than the time he’d had to testify in front of court to get away from Prime with his little brother. This was so, so much worse because he had no bloody clue what to do. 

Imp wanted to do something very special for his school assignment in science and would not do anything else but what he wanted. So now Hordak had to find a way to help him. Great. Now, he didn’t mind helping his little brother out. In fact he’d been quite proud when Imp had come to him, stubbornly staring at his small feet and gathering up the courage to blurt his request to his brother’s face. Hordak’s chest had puffed like that of a bird, mind basking in the fact that he was good enough to be of help. His face hadn’t fallen when Imp had finally told him what he wanted to do. No, the despair about it came afterwards, when Imp had been put to bed. That was always a good time for freaking out.   
  
Hordak was studying astronomy and even if he wasn’t completely useless when it came to mechanics - he knew how to build things and make them work perfectly, thank you very much-, Imp’s project required coding and programming. As much as Hordak loathed to admit it, he wasn’t nearly as good at it as he’d once believed himself to be. Most of his programming projects had been mediocre at best, hardly worth anything above a D or C, as his brother had always put it. Prime had looked smug about that too. Back then, Hordak had wanted nothing more than to please his brother and get rid of the shame he carried. When he thought about it now, the need to break his brother’s nose arose like a phoenix from its ashes.   
  
So now he needed to find someone that could help him, which ultimately meant he would have to actually talk to strangers. How dreadful.   
  


“ With all due respect Hordak, which isn’t a lot by the way, you look like shit.” Catra was lying in her girlfriend’s lap, almost purring as Adora scratched her scalp and put braids in her hair, occasionally adorning one with one of her own horse hair clips. Hordak thought those were ridiculous, Adora was 22, not 13. But he refrained from saying anything, since Catra was ferociously protective of her partner. It had taken them _ages_ to finally get together and admit that they were making each other jealous all throughout high school. Hordak wasn’t completely heartless, so he wouldn’t disturb their slightly disgusting peace. Not yet anyways. He rolled his eyes at her.   
  


“ Why thank you Catra, I hadn’t noticed,” he drawled, inclined on putting as much dry sarcasm in those few words as humanly possible. He picked at the sleeves of his turtleneck absentmindedly and frowned, thoughts running off and pulling different faces out of some dark corner in his mind, making him process information on them, but there were none who fit the description he had. Either they were too bad at what they were studying or they were plain unpleasant people. Unfortunately it was mostly the latter. 

Someone laid their hand on his shoulder and he jumped, turning around with wide eyes only to come face to face with Scorpia, a student so muscular you could easily mistake her for a sports major. But Scorpia, bless her gentle soul, was studying in order to become a therapist. She’d always wanted to do that, and she’d been the first person to realise that Hordak didn’t have a good home to go back to every day. Her dark eyes were pools of concern and he almost wanted to spit out a hateful remark as he had tried to that day, because she’d worn the exact same expression.   
  


“ Are you okay, Hordak? You’re wearing your turtleneck again,” she asked, briefly glancing away as if she feared she’d say something that would set him off. If he could he’d scoff. Scorpia was the definition of a ‘ gentle giant’ and it was rather unlikely that she’d ever say or do something to hurt him. Least of all intentionally. When she spoke again, her voice was significantly more quiet and impossibly soft. It was her “ I’m worried please talk to me” voice and her puppy eyes. He hated the puppy eyes with a passion, especially since she’d taught Imp how to use them against him. “ You only ever wear it when you’re stressed and something’s making you uncomfortable.”   
  


He sighed, one hand coming up to run through his blue hair. “ I need to find someone to help me with Imp’s assignment,” he confessed, annoyance leaving his tone quickly, making room for a slight hue of desperation. “ And I’m terrible at programming and making friends, so no one comes to mind.”   
  


“ I see...” 

Suddenly Scorpia’s entire face lit up. “ I know someone, oh she’s just _perfect_ for this!” She whipped out her phone and quickly began to type out a message, all the while wearing a huge grin on her face. “ You two will get along _sooooo_ well, just, just trust me on this, okay? Aaaaah, don’t you worry buddy, I got cha!”   
  


Hordak briefly wondered whether the mess just got bigger and had not reduced at all.   
  


——————————————-

Set up by Scorpia, he now found himself face to face with a girl called Entrapta. She wasn’t exactly tall, tanned skin and dark, almost reddish eyes complimented perfectly by long purple hair. Dyeing it had to be a bloody pain, he was sure of that. Luckily he favoured his hair to be short, so he didn’t have to buy buckets of hair dye whenever the blue began to fade and his light, almost white roots began to show again. She wore the most joyful grin he’d ever seen another human being, not counting Scorpia, wear. He wanted to say that it grated on his nerves when in reality it was weirdly calming. Somehow that was terrifying and intriguing all the same.   
  
“ So,” she said, folding her hands in front of herself, voice almost more song than actual words and eyes wide open with curiosity, “ Scorpia told me you needed help? For a project?” Her eyes began to sparkle and she started rambling before Hordak could even get a word out. “ This is so interesting! I’ve never worked with someone from astronomy before , you know, only ever engineering majors who get sooo boring after a while because none of them ever have anything new or interesting to say!” He hadn’t even noticed that she’d stood up and pulled him along with her as she walked around her lab, picking up little things here and there and shoving them in different boxes.   
  


“ And they never want to try something new either, it’s always either modified blah blah here or innovative redesign there. That’s why!” She turned around so fast it nearly gave Hordak whiplash from watching her. Where did one get all of this energy? “ I am _so excited_ to work with you! What do you want to do?”   
  


“ It’s an assignment my brother has, uh, he wanted to make a little machine that can show different star constellations via hologram. That’s where you would come in, if you would like to and feel up to it, of course,” he said after a few moments in which he had tried and successfully failed to regain his composure.

This girl certainly was something else. Enthusiasm seemed to be her core essence, the sun powering her every move and decision. Perhaps there was power as strong as a star hidden behind her eyes, making them red like leaves in autumn because her true spirit had never really lost its colour after it obtained a vessel. Perhaps her mind was a nebula, and that’s why she did not bother to dull any of her ideas down by not speaking of them whenever they came to her mind, for each star had a unique glow nothing can ever compare to.   
  


It turned out she was overjoyed and positively giddy to help and thus, they met up more often, Imp quickly joining in and eagerly watching them tinker and throw ideas at each other. His little brother even helped, assisting Entrapta as much as he could without actually handling anything dangerous and nearly blinding Hordak when he jumped into his lap and threw his arms up in excitement while they chose the constellations and information he wanted to display when he turned on his machine.   
  


Hordak had been intrigued by Entrapta when they had first met, but after roughly a month and three days of working together he was positively enraptured. Entrapta was intelligent and determined, yet she always had as much time as possible to spare to brainstorm or talk about the most mundane things. Last Monday they’d argued for half an hour which was the best kind of muffin. Entrapta firmly believed in the power of a tiny chocolate muffin with strawberry frosting and sprinkles on top, while Hordak would gladly die defending his apple muffins with cinnamon crunch. Although it had been a heated discussion, there had always been humour in both of their eyes, challenging their opponent to defend their point and do them one better. Ultimately they had decided that they needed to try each other’s favourite to decide, which was why Hordak had been banned from his own - his **own** \- kitchen. 

Granted he’d been baking all morning and his muffins were now rapidly cooling, but that did absolutely not mean that Entrapta could throw him out of his kitchen to assemble her own minion of chaos, aka Imp. She’d taken Imp by the hand and the little guy had strutted into the kitchen by her side, and now they were blasting Disney songs. Hordak barely did anything but shake his head with a smile more genuine than any other he’d ever worn. 

A cackle broke him out of his dream like state and he bolted for the kitchen door, stopping when he heard the voices coming from inside. 

“ Chaos, I am your mistress!” Entrapta laughed, purple hair covered in flour and her nose covered in chocolate and sprinkles, dutifully placed there by Imp.   
  
Said boy nodded when he was done, satisfied with his masterpiece. As Entrapta picked him up and put him down, away from anything hot - he really was small for his age, but she could not have cared less-, he started to murmur, loud enough for her to hear.   
  


“ Will I ever look like my brother?”   
  


Entrapta raised one eyebrow which thankfully had been spared any flour or egg treatment. She had to at least look partly professional, after all. 

“ What do you mean?” 

“ Will I ever have the hy…hyper…hyperpigmentation,” he struggled to get the word out right, “ or will I have to look like my oldest brother?”

The thought clearly frightened him, judging by the look in his eyes. Entrapta didn’t know everything Prime had done to Hordak and Imp, but she knew that he was anything but a good person. Hordak, her lab partner, she proudly reminded herself, had told her as much. 

Her voice soft, she knelt down next to him. “ Hey, hey, you won’t look like either of them, Imp. You’ll look just like you! And that’s the best look on you that Hordak and I could ever hope for.” She smiled, and even though Hordak could not see her, he was able to hear the warmth in her voice. He almost chuckled, because he knew which expression she was wearing right now. She looked like light itself, too warm and too ethereal to be real. That expression always felt like hot chocolate with marshmallows on a very cold and icy day, comforting and safe, if he dared to say.

“ Do you know why Hordak chose astronomy?” she asked Imp, having thought of an idea to cheer him up. When he shook his head in denial, she brought one fingertip to his nose and pressed gently.   
  


“ Every person is made of something so unique and beautiful, that sometimes your body can’t contain the raw energy it has. In your brother’s case, he must have been filled with so much stardust and so much colour that his skin needed to show it, so that other’s may know how strong he is and just how…,” her eyes had started to shine and the smile on her face was every cake she’d ever eaten, every experiment that she’d ever accomplished in the end, and every sunset she had ever appreciated. It was every bit of joy she’d ever known. “ Just how breathtaking he is.”   
  


Hordak had to steady himself on the other side of the door, heart hammering in a ruthlessness rhythm that was surely anything but healthy. She thought…-Enrapta, beautiful and impressive Entrapta who stunned him when she’d said how beautiful imperfection was- actually thought he was breathtaking?   
  


Tears stung in his eyes and he desperately tried to wipe them away, lest they would figure out he had been eavesdropping on them when they saw him. He held up his hands in front of his face, eyes tracing the marks. Prime had always made him think they were horrible, something to treat and hide. Entrapta made him think they were breathtaking, a sign of something much more pretty than any marble sculpture or emerald ring.

He vastly preferred the things Entrapta made him feel, the way she showed him something they were looking at and suddenly it was as if he’d never seen it before. The way everything purple was her, her laugh and her voice that could replace all music in the world. He would not miss any song, if it meant he would get to listen to her for an eternity, to talk to her. Purple was her expression and her gestures when she was excited. He could probably live in it.   
  
—————————

That night, long after they’d put Imp to bed, they stayed up and put on a quite terrible romantic comedy. A lot of it was terribly cliché or so unfunny that he couldn’t really watch it and rather subtly watched her. Perhaps, if he looked at her long enough, she would engrave herself in his brain and stain it purple, so that he might never forget her, should their paths never cross again after this. He was so busy memorising her that he didn’t immediately react when she asked him a question.   
  


“ I’m sorry Entrapta, what did you say?”   
  


She shook her head with a smile, clearly amused. “ I wanted to know whether you believe in this whole soulmate shtick or not.”   
  


“ I’m not really sure, actually,” he said, putting his head in one hand. “ It’s difficult because I know for a fact that some people are meant more for each other than others, but I don’t believe in magic.”   
  


“ Neither do I. But what if, when the universe was created and galaxies collided, certain stars got torn apart or travelled very close to each other? And if they now exist in us, maybe they’re just trying to find each other again, which would make us humans find the one we’ve been missing.”   
  


He nodded slowly. “ That’s a very sound explanation. And if it’s true, that we’re made of stars and universe, than you must’ve been a part of the Eagle Nebula.”   
  


When she only cocked her head, he explained further. “ The Eagle Nebula is one of the most beautiful nebulae there are. It’s breathtaking, stunning, just like you. It’s reflected in your eyes sometimes, the power and the warmth that’s…you.” He grew more quiet with every word, trying to bite his tongue.   
  


He didn’t want to take it back because all of it was true. She _was_ the most amazing person he’d ever gotten to know, she _was_ laughter and fun and curiosity and more colours than he’d ever known existed. And when she kissed him, it wasn’t a firework, not an explosion. It was the crackling of a fireplace and the anticipation, the giddy joy of a good book beneath one’s fingertips. It was cuddles in a blanket fort and chocolate fondue, joined hands and strawberry tea.   
  


He loved it, and he loved her even more.   
  


Entrapta stayed over more often than not, and when Imp came over to them covered in snot and happy tears when his assignment had people ooohing and aaahing, she and Hordak has decided to move in together. They’d introduced Imp to Emily, a small Roomba with functions no Roomba probably should have, that Entrapta had built. And if, a few years later, they could be found wearing nearly identical - his was thinner, they’d decided on that because they’d thought it would look better with his long and rather thin fingers- silver rings with an entwined black opal and amethyst, there was hardly anyone who had been surprised by it. 


End file.
